Prize for Physics

Three scientists who first created a new ultracold state of matter that Albert Einstein had predicted more than 70 years earlier won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physics. Eric A. Cornell of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Carl E. Wieman of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Wolfgang Ketterle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) shared the $943,000 prize for their production in 1995 of the so-called Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC).

Cornell was born on Dec. 19, 1961, in Palo Alto., Calif. He earned a Ph.D. from MIT (1990) and, after postdoctoral work, joined the faculty of the University of Colorado in 1992. That same year he became a staff scientist at NIST. Wieman was born on March 26, 1951, in Corvallis, Ore. After earning a Ph.D. from Stanford University (1977), he taught and conducted research at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor until 1984, when he moved to the University of Colorado. Both Cornell and Wieman held positions as fellows of the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), a research and teaching centre operated by NIST and the University of Colorado. Ketterle was born on Oct. 21, 1957, in Heidelberg, Ger. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, Garching (1986). After postdoctoral work he joined the faculty at MIT in 1993. He also served as a principal investigator with the Center for Ultracold Atoms, a joint research institution sponsored by MIT, Harvard University, and the National Science Foundation. Ketterle was a German citizen with permanent residency in the U.S.

Generations of physicists had dreamed of creating a BEC since the concept for this exotic state of matter first emerged in the 1920s. In 1924 the Indian physicist Satyendra Bose made important theoretical calculations about the nature of light particles, or photons. Physicists already had recognized that the propagation of light can be thought to consist of discrete packets of energy traveling through space. Bose presented an alternative derivation of a law about the behaviour of photons developed earlier by the German physicist Max Planck. The kinds of particles that fitted Bose’s description eventually were named bosons in his honour. Bosons have a property that allows them to congregate without number, occupying the same quantum state at the same time.

Einstein translated Bose’s work into German, submitted it to a physics journal, and started working on the concept himself. Bose’s work focused on particles, such as photons, that have no rest mass. Einstein extended it to particles with mass, such as the atoms in a dilute gas. He predicted that if a sufficient number of such atoms get close enough together and move slowly enough, they will undergo a phase transition into a new state. That new state of matter became known as a Bose-Einstein condensate.

Physicists recognized the keys to achieving a BEC. The major challenge was to make the gas very cold, about a tenth of a millionth of a degree of absolute zero (−273.15 °C, or −459.67 °F), to slow the motion of the atoms without causing them to condense to a liquid. Atoms in gases usually move in an uncoordinated way, ricocheting off each other and nearby objects. Under the conditions described by Einstein, however, the atoms “sense” one another and transform from a mass of uncoordinated individuals to a coherent group that acts like a single giant atom.

Cornell and Wieman, working at the University of Colorado in 1995, used a combination of laser and magnetic techniques to slow, trap, and cool about 2,000 rubidium atoms to form a BEC. Ketterle, working independently at MIT, created a BEC from sodium atoms. Ketterle’s BEC, which comprised a much larger sample of atoms, was used to carry out additional studies of the condensate, including an interference experiment that provided the first direct evidence of the coherent nature of a BEC. Those first successes led to a flurry of experiments in which physicists expanded the roster of BEC-forming gases and used BECs to produce “atom lasers” that emit coherent beams of matter rather than light.

In 2001 about 20 groups were conducting BEC experiments, which were providing new insights into the laws of physics and pointing to possible practical uses of BECs. (SeeMathematics and Physical Sciences: Physics.) As the Swedish Academy observed, “Revolutionary applications of BEC in lithography, nanotechnology, and holography appear to be just round the corner.”

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.